


Men of No Country

by The_Lake_King



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Artists, Class Differences, Culture Shock, Depression, Falling In Love, Healing, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Culture, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29738457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lake_King/pseuds/The_Lake_King
Summary: In which Peter Pelham lives, a butler's position is refused, and Thomas Barrow learns to be a new sort of man.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Peter Pelham
Comments: 67
Kudos: 84





	1. In Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Re: my Peter Pelham rant, for those of you who were there for it. I would like to personally apologize to dragons_in_the_north for not calling this fic _Thomas Gets a Sugar Daddy,_ though that was the working title for several days.
> 
> Any foreign words and phrases, excluding proper names, will have translations and explanations if required (e.g. of double-entendres, linguistic concepts that do not exist in English) in the footnotes.

Peter didn’t mind London. It had a tarnished, busy beauty to it that he could appreciate, like the offerings of an artist he admired, but whose style was not his own. He liked that the city leant him a degree of invisibility, that he could stroll down the street here, watching and listening to the thrum of humanity without accounting for himself. The only thing that bothered him about it, truly, was the lack of colour. It was bad enough that December meant early sunsets and grey skies, so why did people feel the need to dress in greys and browns? Just once, he should like to see London exactly as it was, but awash in all the gayest fabrics the world had to offer. As if on cue with his thoughts, a woman ran down the street in a vibrant purple coat, holding a silk-flower-bedecked hat on her head with one hand, the other thrust out beside her for balance. She was wearing smeared, bright-red lipstick and shouted something at the men in front of her, presumably to get the hell out of her way. He loved her immediately.

He turned back to his cup as she sprinted out of view. Naturally, as soon as he had his native Earl Grey in front of him, he wanted nothing so much as a steaming cup of mint tea. He curled his hands around the porcelain. He could do that here, when he was being Nobody in a little café. Though he was rather tempted to abandon manners and huddle _delicately_ around teacups or be muffled in blankets at Brancaster, solely to watch Cousin Mirada inflate like a toad. It was certainly cold enough for Bertie to forgive him, and he was the only one whose opinion really mattered. Though his opinion that marrying on New Year’s Eve was a good idea could have done with a challenge.

The man himself strolled in and spotted him immediately, grinning with all his perfect teeth. Peter felt something of equal size but significantly lower quality pulling at his own face. Lord, it was good to see old Bertie.

They embraced wordlessly for a long moment, which drew a few looks, though the eyes soon moved on. Nothing said ‘not bound by English customs’ quite like being liberally spattered with freckles in the dead of winter, he supposed.

“Bertie Pelham, in the last days of his bachelordom!” he announced jovially, clapping his cousin on the shoulder. “How are you keeping, old boy? You look as if you’ve swallowed a sunbeam.”

Bertie blushed, which was a phenomenon to behold. “I asked her to meet us here,” he murmured, as if his fiancée coming to meet them were some sort of grave secret. “I wanted to introduce you before all Hell breaks loose.”

Peter bent his head in, in keeping with the situation. “I take it the Wicked Witch of the Moorlands still doesn’t approve?”

“I’ll have you know,” said Bertie, giving him what he probably thought was a terribly stern look, “that Mama has given us her blessing. So if you could be civil, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’d never ruin this for you,” he reassured him. “I shall be the picture of decorum.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to go _that_ far.”

They chatted on over their tea, discussing the wedding plans and getting all the Crawleys straight in Peter’s head. Bertie had relaxed around the edges, and it was a lovely thing to see. He smiled, he leaned, he even gesticulated in a very un-Bertie way. Peter wasn’t sure whether leaving the military life had finally caught up to him, or if love had done it, until Edith walked in. It was definitely love.

She was a gorgeous thing, all gold and pink and fawn from her hat to her shoes. She smiled brilliantly at Bertie and kissed him full on the mouth. He blushed (twice in less than twenty minutes!), stumbling through the introductions, and nearly tripped when he pulled a chair out for her. Peter shot him a look that said ‘Dear Lord, you have it bad,’ which was answered by a resigned ‘I know, please shut up’ glance from behind her shoulder. Peter bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“Bertie has told me so much about you, I feel as if I’m meeting an old friend,” said Edith, looking at him with genuine fascination. He had been in many a situation where his reputation preceded him, and it usually made him feel like an exotic, ugly insect pinned to a card. Edith’s scrutiny made him feel more like a rare gem in someone’s private collection, being taken out for a special guest. That, he could manage.

“I hope we shall be the best of friends,” he said, not needing to fake a charming smile. “I can already see that all the mad scribblings you inspire have been completely justified.”

He ended up performing a dramatic recitation of one of Bertie’s more ridiculous letters from Paris during the couple’s separation, much to his cousin’s embarrassment and Edith’s hilarity, and was in turn regaled by tales from Edith’s life as a magazine proprietor. By the time they left to collect Peter’s luggage from the hotel and catch their train, they were indeed chatting like old friends and ganging up on Bertie. The worry that had weighed on his heart lifted. They would be perfect for each other, and happy as he was for them, he couldn’t help the selfish hope that bubbled up in his chest. The hope that she could be a marchioness in all but name. That he could keep to his sunny Tangiers and his paintings and they could carry it all on. They would certainly manage Brancaster better than he ever could.

“I’m surprised at how you’re managing yourself without a valet,” Bertie remarked as he helped Peter shove one of his cases into the rack. “What’s become of that Mohammed chap?” 

“If you saw the inside of these, you wouldn’t be surprised.” He had had to sit on one of his valises to get it closed, which he imagined was not at all good for his suits. And then there was the Paint Issue. “And Mohammed simply doesn’t _do_ winter in England.”

“Oh dear. I pity the footman who’s going to have to sort your mess out.”

Peter elbowed him, which was not particularly dignified, but Edith didn’t seem to mind them shoving each other like errant children and he didn’t care what the steward made of it. He had missed this. Seeing his cousin in his natural habitat was his one point of homesickness. If it wasn’t for Bertie, the whole island could fall into the sea and he would get along just fine. The barren fields that rolled past the window held no allure for him, nor the empty sky above. They were dead and desolate now, all greys. But Edith was bright and full of colour, and Bertie reflected her back like a mirror pool. He sketched them in bold lines as the train rattled North, carrying him further and further from where he belonged. Soon it would be time to put on his Lord Hexham face and ape the man he was supposed to be.

They arrived in Yorkshire far too soon. Mr. Branson (“Please call me Tom, we’ll be family in a couple days”) collected him and Edith from the station, while Bertie went on to Castle Howard. The Irishman was quite a welcome surprise, with an easy smile and an earthiness about him that felt more like the people Peter knew in Tangiers than the ones he knew in England. Tom was a good distraction for a moment, but could not obscure the fact that he was being thrown in the deep end with a load of very-English strangers. Peter felt the old familiar lead weight slide into his stomach as the car rounded the drive. For God’s sake, they had the servants lined up. Surely they had better things to bloody be doing, but no, they were here to welcome a runaway degenerate into the house. And some poor bastard was going to have to valet for him, probably with warnings about the Kind of Man He Was—

“Lord Hexham, welcome to Downton.” Edith’s mother was elegant and crisp, with a voice like a warm bath. She looked nothing like her daughter. She was all night colours.

“Lady Grantham, a pleasure to meet you at last.” Peter managed to pull his dignity together and kissed her hand. She had a lovely, calm smile that took over her whole face, like she was truly glad to see him. Perhaps she was. He let that thought carry him through the rest of the formalities.

Lord Grantham looked much as he expected (and vaguely remembered from some society to-do), tweed and rounded and dignified. Mary was night colours too, but she had the air of a beautiful predator about her that was belied by her rather unassuming husband. The children were all little bright things, who hopped inside ahead of him as he was informed that a tall, curly footman called Andrew would deal with him.

“Do you make paintings?” Mary’s son looked up at him with big blue eyes as he stamped his feet for warmth in the great hall. Peter had the distinct impression that the children had insisted on joining the welcome party because they were curious about him.

“George, don’t pester Lord Hexham,” his mother murmured.

“It’s quite alright. We’re all going to be family soon enough, are we not?” Peter squatted down beside the little boy, so they could talk properly. He had a feeling the other adults in the room were unsure of what to do with such a development, but he always felt like an idiot looking so far down at someone. “I do indeed. Do you paint?”

George shook his head, smiling bashfully.

“Do you…draw?” he prodded playfully.

“Yes. I dwaw with Sybbie.”

“What have you drawn lately?”

“A dwagon!”

“Well! I’ve never seen a dragon before. You must show me what they look like. Are there any about these parts?”

“There’s one in the woods. Mr. Bawwow told me about him. His name is Otto.”

“What an excellent name for a dragon. Is Mr. Barrow your friend?”

George nodded, looking suddenly very lost. “But he was ill and then he went away. I didn’t want him to go.”

Peter opened his mouth and shut it again, his heart cracking just a little for someone he had never met, who he would never meet, who told little boys about dragons named Otto.

“He means our former under-butler,” Edith cut in quickly, bouncing Marigold on her hip. “He moved on to another house. But he’s coming for the wedding, Georgie, didn’t we tell you?”

“It’s not the same,” George said, as if they were all particularly slow.

“You didn’t tell _me_!” Sybbie squeaked indignantly, wheeling on her father with a look that could shatter glass.

“Perhaps we all ought to let Lord Hexham freshen up?” Grantham cut across the deliberations on the not-dead-after-all former under-butler. As much as Peter wanted to protest that the children were a delight, his legs and back were making a fuss at being on a level with them. He took the out and scuttled, as quickly as dignity and politeness would allow, to his room.

Freshening up meant taking a quiet bath and counting backwards from one thousand, skating his thumbs along the insides of his knees. The Crawleys seemed nicer than he had expected them to be. Certainly more relaxed. They had hardly blinked at his slightly-to-the-left-of-fashionable suit, and if they knew about the more unsavoury aspects of him then they were glossing it over well enough. Dinner would be another matter. ‘Granny’ was coming, and she sounded absolutely terrifying. He tried not to think about whether or not his white tie would even fit him when he ran the cloth over his chest and belly, or what he would do if it didn’t. He had never been slim, exactly, but his love of pastry was steadily catching up with him in a most unflattering way these days. At least, unlike Bertie, he still had all his hair.

He returned to his room with curls as tamed as they were going to get to find Andrew putting away a portion of his freshly ironed clothing, the dubious white tie already laid out. “On a scale of mess to cataclysm, how dreadful were my suitcases?” Peter asked conversationally. Andrew looked like he had just been politely asked to shoot himself. “Never mind, don’t answer that,” he said quickly. He had become too used to Mohammed, who would have thrown up his hands without hesitation and declared his creased jackets a _cauchemar_.[1]

The footman recovered himself quickly. “I wasn’t sure which you wanted for tomorrow, my lord, so I took a selection. I can prepare more tonight.” Peter got the strangest feeling he was doing an impression of someone. Perhaps Lord Grantham’s valet.

“The more conservative options, I see. That’s probably wise; I don’t think I could get away with the purple one.” He tried to smile but he had a feeling it wasn’t translating well.

Andrew inclined his head. The footman helped him into his extremely-snug-but-still-workable clothes with flitting movements that betrayed the fact he was still new to this. There was none of the other kind of nervousness, though, for which Peter was extremely grateful.

He was quite certain that Andrew had given him very clear and simple instructions on how to get to the drawing room, and that it was really very findable, but that didn’t stop him from ending up in the bit of more-library that was attached to the first library. By the time he made it to the green-papered room he was nearly late.

“Oh, there you are, Peter! We weren’t sure you were coming after all,” Edith exclaimed.

“I got rather turned about, I’m afraid,” Peter admitted sheepishly. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“Not at all. Did Andrew not show you?” Grantham frowned. The butler pricked up his ears and his very intimidating eyebrows. Peter was sure the staff required full battle garb to contend with such bushy omens of doom.

“Oh, he told me where to go before I dismissed him, but I’m quite incapable of remembering directions. No head for it whatsoever.” He tried to smile and fidgeted with the ring on his little finger, feeling incredibly stupid. “Lovely chap, by the way. Good taste,” he added, trying to save poor Andrew from his superior. It was absolutely the Wrong Thing to say. Mary exchanged a glance with Tom and the butler inflated in a terribly ominous manner.

Edith made some sort of non-committal noise, in the way that well-bred women could do without seeming rude, and presented him to the dowager countess. She was every bit as terrifying as anticipated, with her iron-grey hair and pursed lips. She fixed him with a cold stare as he stumbled through pleasantries, taking in his too-long hair and his too-tight buttons with calm distaste.

“Are you travelling alone, Lord Hexham, or might we expect an invasion of bohemians at my granddaughter’s wedding?” she asked, deadpan.

“Granny,” Edith warned.

“Only me, I’m afraid. I don’t believe I’ve ever qualified as an invasion.”

The dowager gave him a look that said ‘that remains to be seen’ as clearly as if she had spoken aloud. Edith gave him an apologetic grimace. It was going to be a long evening.

When they went in, he found himself between Lady Grantham and Edith. The seating arrangement soothed his nerves a little, but not enough to ignore the dowager’s unimpressed gaze or Mary’s eye-flicking in between murmurs to Tom. He smiled at Andrew without thinking when the footman brought in the first course, and had to live with that awful butler’s indignation for his carelessness. Over a smile! Sometimes he truly hated this country. He felt his appetite trickling away as those eyebrows condemned him from across the room. It was those old family dinners all over again, and his armour had rusted from lack of use. He felt naked, countering each question about Tangiers or pointed remark about his ‘lifestyle’ (all of the latter courtesy of the dowager) with weaker and weaker answers while he pushed his food around his plate. The smell of trifle was so horribly cloying that he refused it all together.

“Peter?” Cora inquired softly, still relishing the use of his first name that he had granted her without hesitation. He realized that he had missed the entirety of what she had just said. “Are you alright?”

“Oh! Yes, I’m fine, thank you. You must forgive me for drifting off. I get terribly sea-sick, you see, and I’m afraid I’m not quite as recovered as I’d thought.” It wasn’t completely untrue. Even the train journey had set his insides rocking ominously. At any rate, it was a more acceptable explanation than saying he couldn’t eat or concentrate on conversation with the butler looking at him like that.

Cora made sympathetic noises to the effect that he ought to have taken a tray if he was feeling unwell, to which he made all the reciprocal noises about how he couldn’t possibly miss his first dinner at Downton. He made his excuses as soon as the savoury was finally cleared. Dread for the rest of his stay in England had crept into his chest and bedded down for the duration. How he had survived this sort of thing for years, he would never know. At least he managed to squeeze a few drops of satisfaction from informing the butler that he could undress himself, and Andrew would not be required.

He felt sorry for Edith when he said goodnight to her, as she seemed to be taking his failure to have a good time rather personally. She kissed him sweetly on the cheek before he went up, and turned on her grandmother with a set to her shoulders that told him there would be Words exchanged as soon as he left the room. He hoped, not for the first time, that he wouldn’t make any part of her wedding awkward with his inability to be adequately English. Or to stare down a butler. Or to erase the damning knowledge that half the landed gentry had of the late Lord Hexham’s second son.

He lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling many hours after going up. The room felt too closed in, spacious as it was. He longed to step out onto his balcony back home. What he really wanted were those sultry nights in summer when it was almost too hot to sleep. When all the windows were thrown open at night to catch any sort of breeze, and the scent of the garden hung heavy in the air. He wanted to go walking in the moonlight beneath the verbena and jasmine, or to lie atop the sheets and smoke his pipe in the silence. He comforted himself in the knowledge that those nights would come again, and that perhaps, in the months and years to come, there would be someone who could one day take over Brancaster properly. Someone who would love the things that Bertie did, and would do what Peter could not.

Somewhere, a clock chimed. Forty-eight hours to go until the new year. His stomach growled in protest at his lack of dinner. There was something to be done about that at least, rude as it was to be getting up to a midnight kitchen raid in someone else’s house. The night air was freezing against his skin, and his robe didn’t do much to improve the situation. He fumbled around for a candle, going through several matches in an attempt to light the damn thing. He hoped his shaky hands were a product of the chill and not a harbinger of misery to come.

Someone else was out there. A little blond head caught the light of the sconces, bobbing down to the end of the hall.

“Psst,” he whispered at the retreating figure.

George whipped around, looking immensely guilty for a moment before he screwed his courage to the sticking place. “I’m going to get some milk,” he declared, head held high as Peter caught up to him.

“All by yourself?”

George nodded. “Ev’ybody’s sleeping. I left Nanny a note,” he elaborated, with the air of don’t-you-know-I’m-very-grown-up-and-responsible.

Peter suppressed a smile. “I’m not sleeping.”

“No.” He screwed up his face, pondering. “You can come, if you like.”

“I’d like that very much. I’m very hungry, you see, and I don’t know the way to the kitchen. I’m scared I’ll get lost and never find my way back.”

“Don’t be scared. I won’t let you get lost.” George held up his hand for Peter to take. It was wonderfully warm. God, if only he could just deal with the children and leave the adults to Nanny.

They made their way through a green baize door and down the stairs, Peter’s candle throwing spidery shadows from the railing. Peter always loved the servants’ passages in great houses, even though he had gotten spectacularly lost in the backways of Brancaster several times over the years. They were like the veins of a great creature, hidden beneath the surface but thrumming with activity, keeping it all going.

The kitchen was smaller than Brancaster’s, but well-kitted-out and still warm from the day’s operation. George tugged him into the pantry and pointed out all the divisions of upstairs and downstairs, for tomorrow and from today.

“You’ve got to only take little pieces of ev’ything, so no one misses it,” the boy concluded.

“That’s very good advice,” Peter chuckled, taking an apple, a bun, and some cheese from the downstairs shelf. “Did your papa tell you that?”

George shook his head. “Bawwow takes little pieces off all the pies and things and puts ’em in a napkin.”

“This Barrow sounds like a very interesting person. I bet he had all kinds of good tricks.”

“He showed me how to tie a slip-knot. And he’s the best at cwicket, but don’t tell Donk.”

“Donk?”

“My Gwandpapa.”

“Oh. Why do you call him Donk?”

“Because he’s Bob like the donkey.”

“I see.” He didn’t, but he supposed that was the inherent joy of having children about. They had some wonderfully bent logic, which all made perfect sense in their tiny heads. He never truly regretted his decision to stop pretending he was anything but what he was, to spare some poor woman the chore of being his wife and to spare himself the constant, crushing weight of Keeping Up Appearances. But sometimes, like when George held onto his robe and swung about absentmindedly, his heart sank in the knowledge that he would never have his own baby.

Peter set his plunder at the table and busied himself heating some milk for the both of them, forcibly clearing his maudlin thoughts and listening to George rattle on about all the things the former under-butler had taught him. These included how to wind a clock, how to skip stones, and quite a lot of information about Roman gladiators. All together, Peter got the impression of a kindly, middle-aged fellow with clever eyes, who loved to read and was possessed of a sweet tooth to rival Peter’s own. 

“You must introduce us at the wedding,” he said, as they both sat down and tucked in.

“You’ll like him,” George declared with the absolute confidence that only a six-year-old could carry off. He frowned, blowing on his milk. “What should I call you when Auntie Edith marries Mr. Pelham?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, we shall be family then. And I don’t call Donk ‘Lord Gwantham.’”

“Ah, that’s a good point.” He pondered it for a moment while he chewed. “Well, I’ll be your uncle’s cousin. So I suppose I could be Cousin Peter. Or Uncle Peter, if you like. Bertie’s like a brother to me, so I think it works.”

“Uncle Peter,” George decided after a moment of deliberation. “I’ll tell Sybbie. She’s _my_ cousin, but she’s like my sister too.”

“I’m glad that’s settled,” Peter chuckled. He was feeling much more relaxed now, sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with his hands curled around something warm. “Now what shall I call you?” he asked playfully.

“I’m just George, I haven’t got a fancy name.” Peter snorted around his apple, which was horrid manners, but George didn’t seem to notice. “Except the servant’s say ‘Master George,’ which is silly, but they always do it anyway.”

“I imagine you grandparents insist on it,” Peter reasoned, half-heartedly. It was a strange place that aristocratic children occupied, where they were ‘Master’ to the people they spent the most time with. He remembered it well, just like he remembered the steadily growing distance as ‘Master Peter, what have you got up to now?’ became ‘Of course, my lord’ that George was still too young to have experienced. “But it is a bit silly.”

George smiled at him conspiratorially. “Sometimes when no one’s awound Bawwow says ‘Geooor-geh.’”

Peter hid his smile in his cup. “It sounds like you miss him a lot.”

George nodded, looking down at his swinging legs. “I wish he didn’t have to go.”

“You should tell him so, when you see him. Sometimes grown-ups think children have forgotten them when they go away because they’re silly like that. And you haven’t forgotten him at all, have you?”

“Do you think he’ll be ill again if he thinks that?” George’s eyes snapped up, suddenly looking downright frightened.

“No,” said Peter hurriedly, feeling the dangerous pull of unfamiliar waters. “I’m sure that’s not the case.”

“But he was ill fwom being sad,” George insisted. “I’m not supposed to say it because ev’yone lied and said he had ’flu, but it’s _stupid_.” Peter’s stomach bottomed out. “And if he thinks I’ve forgotten him that would make him sad.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, George.” He wasn’t sure of any such thing, and cursed himself for bringing up the whole business. “And you’ll see him soon, won’t you?”

George nodded, still looking like he might cry.

“I’ll tell you what,” Peter said, taking the boy’s little hands in his own. “I think it’s going to make Mr. Barrow very happy to see you again. So you must give him a big hug and tell him how much you missed him, so he knows that you’re happy to see him too. I know I should have an awfully hard time being sad if someone I loved gave me a nice hug.”

The boy seemed content with that, and, to Peter’s surprise, climbed into his lap and gave him a hug. They cuddled like that in the kitchen until George’s yawns signaled it was time to go back upstairs. They snuck into the nursery like thieves, and Peter couldn’t help but snort at the absurdity of the whole situation, and more specifically the misspelt note on George’s pillow.

“Goodnight Georgie,” Peter whispered.

“Goodnight Uncle Peter.” The moniker made warmth hum in his chest. He hoped the others would call him that, too.

Valiantly as he tried to get some sleep that night, worry kept shooting him awake. He hoped he had misunderstood what George had told him, or that the little boy somehow had the wrong of it. But he knew in his gut that there was only one way that it would filter through to the upstairs children that their under-butler was so sad it made him ill. He buried his face in the pillow and tried not to think about a bottle of laudanum and an empty flat in Paris. When sleep finally pulled him under, he dreamed of following a faceless man down endless back passageways, picking up jasmine flowers as they fell from the stranger’s livery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 nightmare [return to text]


	2. White Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for depression, suicidal thoughts and vomiting.
> 
> In other words, it's from Thomas' POV so strap in.

Thomas squinted in the winter light. It wasn’t particularly bright out, but the glare was still painful, accustomed as he was to dim rooms. He tried not to think about the last time he had really been outside while the sun was up. He had little reason for it, these days. No one cared if he smoked in his office, or in his room. No one was around to care. Mrs. Jenkins knew her job and the Stiles’ predictable eating habits, and therefore seldom had a professional reason to speak with him. Every time he tried to start a conversation that wasn’t strictly professional, she would look at him like he had just hopped up on the table and started to sing the Marseillaise. He had given up on the sour-faced old cook a week into his tenure as butler. It had taken him nearly a month to give up on the maid. Elsie was no one, at least at work. Perhaps she was someone somewhere else. He hoped so. He had never seen a woman do such a brilliant impression of wallpaper. Wallpaper had no conversational skills, no opinions or feelings or need for someone to just _say_ something to him, Jesus Christ. He wished he could be wallpaper.

He had been getting the hang of it. He wasn’t no one yet, but his someone-ness was sinking. His desire to draw to a close abruptly might have come to nothing, but he could fade. That was the acceptable way to die. And he could manage it. He could manage shorter and vaguer responses to shorter and vaguer letters. He could let them believe that he was getting on fine while he pushed his food around his plate and lay awake at night. Perhaps he could live forever in their minds as the man who walked out of Downton, the way he would always be fourteen to the people he left behind in Manchester. But then Lady Edith had to go and invite him to her wedding.

The station was empty except for Thomas and a blind man. The man sat on a bench, eating nuts out of a paper bag. Bloody Edith. He was going to have to remember how to be Thomas Barrow, but not _too_ much. Perhaps he should be awful, so they would never invite him to anything ever again. Not so very long ago he might have decided that that was a perfect course of action. Now the stupid, sentimental part of him won out where there was no anger left to burn it up. He was done being angry, that much was certain. He didn’t have the energy. Perhaps it was the cold seeping out of the bathroom tiles that drained it from him along with everything else. Perhaps it was all just part of getting older. Either way, he would use the chance to say goodbye.

The train pulled in and the blind man got up. He must take it often, as he seemed to know exactly where he was going. There was a sleepy placidity to him that spoke of ritual. Thomas curled in on himself when he found a seat and thought about invented romance. _That_ wound was so old and numb by now that there was nothing left to pick at. He snaked his fingers up the cuff of his left sleeve and picked at his wrist instead. It still tugged a bit at something down deep in his arm if he pressed and scratched the right way. It had been a good cut. The scar on his right arm was superficial, and didn’t tug on anything at all.

The landscape rattled past, all grey in the final hours of 1925. The fields and trees and increasingly dense buildings didn’t care that the year was ending and a new one beginning. They only knew it was winter. That didn’t stop everyone pretending that there was some great dividing line between December 31st and January 1st. He anticipated someone making some pointed comment to him about fresh starts in connection with this imaginary division. He made a bet with himself that it would be Anna Bates. It seemed like the type of trite nonsense she might say in the face of his nothingness. A very Christian sentiment, that sinners could be redeemed with the turning of the year. It would never occur to her that he didn’t fancy the whole concept of redemption. He would rather fade.

He truly did his best to be happy for Edith. Much as he had never been able to summon excessive sympathy for any member of the aristocracy, no one deserved to be left at the altar and then have a lover die on them. Thomas wondered if Mr. Pelham knew about Marigold, and found he rather hoped he did. Rumours had flown that that’s what their split had been about, when Pelham scuttled off to Paris to deal with some gallery thing for his cousin. Laying eyes on said cousin would certainly be something. Thomas found himself rather hoping Peter Pelham would be obnoxiously dressed and incredibly obvious. He didn’t think Edith would mind, but just about everyone else would. Such a prospect would have left a younger Thomas on the edge of his seat, internally cackling with glee. No dice today. But even aspiring wallpaper could appreciate the promise of dinner and a show.

The train left York behind, and with it all chances for a whiff of chocolate on the freezing air. Thomas wondered what the weather was like in Tangiers right now. As he understood it, even the Mediterranean was cool and wet in midwinter, but in the sort of way that any intrepid Englishman might consider perfectly nice. He imagined rain on palm trees, and other things he had never seen, letting half-baked images carry him all the way to Downton Village.

His hand hurt like a bitch.

The landlord at the Grantham Arms remembered him by name, which was strange. He had never tried to make an impression on the man. Room 6 had cream wallpaper, with little bouquets of unidentifiable flowers on it. He left his bag on the bed.

The familiar spire of St. Michael and All Angels pointed into the winter sky like a rifle. There were white roses outside the door, showing their true cream against the bright snow. All manner of people were still making their way in, all walks of life coming to see one of the ladies of the big house finally tie the knot. He slipped into the church behind a group of men he vaguely recognized as tenants and immediately scanned the altar. Bertie Pelham was up there with Reverend Travis, thankfully not looking like he was about to do a runner. His cousin stood beside him, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he were the one anxiously awaiting his bride. Thomas wasn’t sure what he had expected. Excepting the mass of dark freckles and the streaks of sun-bleaching in his otherwise brown hair, the Marquess of Hexham was disappointingly ordinary. He was just a bit too short to be called tall, just a shade too plump to be called fit, with long-fingered hands that flapped about as he spoke and that peculiar sort of overbite Thomas had only seen in noble mouths. He had a warm smile, though.

A bit miffed, Thomas spied Downton’s servants and made his way over. It was as good a place as any, even if the only free spot was next to Anna Bates. Her husband didn’t acknowledge him, which he supposed was fair play. 

“You managed to get away, then,” she said, smiling as he slid into the pew.

“Don't worry, the treadmill awaits my return.” Soon enough he would be back on the train, back to sinking. Back out of sight and out of mind where she could comfortably forget about him.

“How's it going? Are you getting on with everyone?”

“There isn't much of an everyone to get on with.” He couldn’t tell anymore whether his voice wasn’t nearly as strained as it felt, or if people just didn’t give a damn.

“Don't you enjoy it more than bein’ at war with all the world?” Here we go.

“I suppose.” There was no sense in telling her that it was as much the world who was at war with him. She sighed and started fanning herself with the order of service, squirming in her seat. “What's the matter?” he asked.

“It's just a bit hot in here.”

_It’s bloody freezing in here, you’re just about to pop, is all._ It wasn’t a particularly charitable thought, but he was allowed to be uncharitable in the confines of his own skull when he was this cold inside a building. He hated churches. They were drafty and uncomfortable and didn’t want him.

Phyllis turned around in her seat to smile at him. “I’m so glad you made it, Thomas,” she said softly. He had a feeling that she wasn’t just talking about the wedding and he resented it immensely. It was hard to be angry at her, though, when she _meant_ everything so much. He was just grumpy because he was cold and in pain and out of place, and he knew it.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. It was.

The organ started up and the congregation rose. Time for round two. Thomas had never quite understood the sentiment that Edith was the ugly duckling of the Crawley sisters. Though perhaps, as all three were beautiful, someone had to get the short end of the stick. Today was her day, though, and she looked every bit the part. She was bold as brass in her gossamer white dress, the very picture of a high-class bride from one of Phyllis’ magazines. The children trailed behind her, all in thin white cloth too like little snow-faerie people. They must be chilly like that. He hoped that someone who was allowed to do so would scoop them up for a cuddle.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honourable estate…”

Thomas let the ceremony wash over him. He wasn’t one to believe much in happy ever after, but it certainly seemed like Edith was getting hers. Mr. Pelham looked at her like she had skipped down off the moon and walked up the aisle trailing stardust. There was a brief tense moment when the reverend asked for objections and Thomas wondered if someone might throw her bastard at her. But it passed, and they were married, and Thomas was a little grateful for how quickly Protestants did things. He wanted to get to the part where there was alcohol and he would be sweating in his suit.

Phyllis did her best to include him on the ride back. She insisted he join the staff on the cart, and much as he didn’t want the company, he had a hard time saying no to her sad brown eyes. It wasn’t that they were keeping him out of things, per se. It was just clear that they didn’t really know how to talk to him anymore. If they ever had. He knew he wasn’t making it easy, either, but one-word answers were all his brain seemed capable of supplying. He wished Phyllis would stop looking at him like that.

The warmth and anonymity of the reception was a relief. He took up a place by a column and faded into it, eating as many canapés as he could get away with and watching people flit about like butterflies. Part of him itched to take a tray around.

“Mr. Barrow!”

Thomas only had a second to brace himself before two small beings ploughed into his knees. Marigold trailed behind her cousins, blinking up at him with her big blue eyes. To his surprise, she came up and hugged his legs as well the moment that George and Sybbie pulled away to chatter at him about everything under the sun. In less than two minutes he heard about Nanny’s latest ideas regarding exercise, several occasions of ‘Donk’ being silly, and answered the exclamations of ‘did you see us?’ ‘But we didn’t see you!’ multiple times. He knew he was grinning like a fool, and didn’t have it in him to care.

“Hello darlin’,” he said to Marigold, while the others were momentarily distracted by a passing Mr. Branson. “What did you think of mummy’s dress, eh?”

He didn’t make out much of her answer, muffled in his trouser leg and garbled by toddler-speak as it was, but he caught the word ‘princess’ and a generally positive feeling.

“—on good authority that there’s something very interesting that’s just been put out,” Branson was saying, waggling his eyebrows.

“I want to stay with Mr. Bawwow,” said George resolutely, as Marigold immediately skittered over to her uncle.

“What’s this? Are you passing up treats for me, Master George?”

“I didn’t forget you,” the boy said seriously.

“Well I should hope not, I’ve only been gone a few months.” Thomas shot Branson a perplexed look and found it mirrored on the other man’s face. No clarification from that quarter, then.

“Come meet Uncle Peter,” George demanded suddenly, tugging him across the room by his bad hand. He nearly stumbled in front of Lord Grantham, who seemed, as always, vaguely confused by his grandson’s attachment to the former under-butler. “Uncle Peter!”

Lord Hexham’s eyes lit up at the sight of George and then traveled up Thomas’ body with something that could be politely termed ‘appreciation.’ A part of Thomas that used to work informed him that they were lovely eyes: warm, liquid hazel flecked with deep green. “Hello George. And who have you brought?”

“Mr. Bawwow.” George had a bout of shyness and tried to hide behind both of them at once.

Surprise danced over Hexham’s expressive face, but he quickly recovered with a broad smile. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Barrow. I’ve been learning all manner of things, from the habits of dragons to the finer points of pie thievery, and I’m told that you are the source of all such wisdom.”

Thomas snorted and took his proffered hand. “I’m sure the pleasure is all mine, Lord Hexham.”

“We had an adventure!” George piped up, half hopping into Thomas’ arms.

“Did you now? Did you have an Otto sighting?”

George shook his head, hugging Thomas’ neck like he never wanted to let go. “It was a kitchen adventure.”

“Ah. Pie thievery, then.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Georgie,” he murmured into that little blond mop. He could feel himself getting weepy. “I missed you very much.” That little boy had almost made all the rest of it worth it, and it was likely they would never see each other again. George _would_ forget him, not tomorrow or next month, but in a year or two when he started that slow, depressing metamorphoses from a child into an earl. It was a comfort, in a way, that Thomas wouldn’t see that part. He would always have the little boy who loved to play aeroplanes, preserved under glass in his mind’s eye.

Hexham, to his credit, seemed quite content to let him stand there saying nothing, swaying back and forth with the young master of the house in his arms. Thomas had a feeling that if he were to truly break down and cry in earnest, the marquess would have no more reaction than to lend him a handkerchief. Mortification at the prospect kept his tears dutifully in check until George was gently pried off by his stepfather for a photograph or some such rubbish. He could dab at his eyes with his own damn hanky as they walked away.

“Mine was the gardener,” Lord Hexham said suddenly.

“I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“When I was that age, I thought our head gardener was the most fabulous human being on God’s Earth. He used to take me out with him and teach me all about the plants. My father was quite perturbed to find that his seven-year-old son knew how to graft apples.” Hexham looked into middle distance, brandishing his empty wine glass with each rise and fall of his voice, of which there were many. “He even made me charcoal sticks. I felt like a regular grown-up Michelangelo, drawing all over the blank ledgers with them.”

“George likes books,” Thomas said quietly. He felt his eyeballs giving Hexham the once-over, entirely without his permission. Thomas the footman would have already been scheming about how to engineer a quick fuck, but Thomas the butler didn’t have the energy to play this game. The marquess had clearly noticed his gaze, too.

“And making up stories, I understand.” Hexham smiled, meeting his eyes almost shyly. “I wonder where he gets that from.”

“Probably the faeries, my lord,” Thomas returned, deadpan. And why had he gone and said _that_?

“Oh, those dastardly things.” Hexham was looking at him now as if they shared a secret and he couldn’t quite believe it. Thomas supposed they did.

“I can’t pour the bloody stuff!” Carson exclaimed from the table behind him.

“Oh dear,” said Hexham.

“Carson, are you alright?” Grantham asked, popping up beside them. He had a look on his face that said he already knew the answer and it wasn’t pretty. Thomas noticed for the first time the way Carson’s hands shook. He remembered how the butler had let him decant the wine in the last days of his employment at Downton, and knew with sudden certainty that the problem wasn’t new, or about to go away. He felt a little sorry for the old battle axe. Thomas knew what it was to have his body betray him. Pain and stiffness could be hidden well enough in their profession, but shaking hands were a death sentence.

“I do beg your pardon, my lord,” Carson bowed his head, out of deference or embarrassment it was impossible to say.

“I can pour it for you,” Thomas cut in. “Excuse me, Lord Hexham.”

“Oh. Yes, quite,” Hexham said, looking far more put-out than he had any right to be.

“Mr. Barrow, you are here as a guest,” Carson insisted, mouth twisting. Whether it was in consternation at the breach of propriety or the indignity of having _Thomas_ take over was a mystery.

“I’m happy to help, Mr. Carson.” The two men locked eyes over the table, while Andy hovered nervously in the periphery. _I’m trying to smooth this over you old bastard, take the out._

“Carson,” said Lord Grantham, a lightbulb going up behind his eyes, “I know the answer. You and Mrs. Hughes will stay in your cottage, but what if we were to ask Barrow to be the new butler?”

Thomas knew his mouth was open but found himself unable to shut it. Where had that bright idea been when he was being forced out?

“Carson, the elder statesman would steer things as he’s always done,” Grantham continued, oblivious to Hexham trying to discreetly edge away from the scene whilst still eavesdropping. “What do you think, Carson?” he asked gently. “You’ll have a pension from the estate.”

“You can’t pretend Barrow isn’t sufficiently experienced.” Lady Mary put in from the sidelines.

“No, I wouldn’t say that, milady,” Carson mused. “I trained him.”

“Well, Barrow?” She turned to him as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps, from where she was standing, it was. “Would you like to be butler here?

He thought, for a moment, of George. He hoped that little boy would never find out that he wasn’t enough to keep his Barrow here. “I am honoured that you would think of me, but I’m afraid I must decline, my lady.”

“I admit I’m a little surprised, Barrow,” Grantham tried, obviously flabbergasted that things were not simply falling into place. “You seemed quite determined to stay.”

Well that was one way of putting it.

How could he explain it to Lord Grantham, who had never painted a bathtub red? He wouldn’t understand. None of the people behind the eyes locked on him would understand that that bathtub would always be _the_ bathtub, now. That the patch of wall in the hallway would always be the one Bates had slammed him into, the first time Thomas had consciously thought _yes, hurt me_ with a glee that frightened him _._ The woods would always be where he screamed into the night for a dead soldier, with no one there to hear. The third door down would always be Jimmy’s room. Carson would always be Carson, breathing down his neck as the ‘elder statesman’, and he would never measure up. If he came back, he would have to know them all, day after day and year after year, unable to fade into the wallpaper because Phyllis or Mrs. Hughes or someone would drag him out. It wasn’t a kindness, when he only wanted to fade. But they would never understand that there was absolution to be found in painting a bathtub.

“With all due respect my lord, I was asked to leave, and I left. I will not twist Mr. Carson’s arm now that I have found other employment. I am glad to help out for the moment, but then I must go home.” He said it as if he had a home. Downton was the closest he had ever come to one of those, and being back did nothing if not show with painful clarity what a poor imitation of the real thing it was.

“Very well, Barrow,” Grantham said hurriedly, gently steering Carson out of his place. “We shall begin looking for someone else.” Mary raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing. Thomas elected to smile apologetically and let her be miffed. She would survive it, he was sure.

It was Molesley who relieved him of his self-appointed job some time later. He mumbled something to him about going out for a smoke and slipped away the moment he could, his service-daze broken. He barely saw the door, the staircase, the perplexed look on Daisy’s face when he passed her downstairs and picked up his coat. It didn’t matter that he was a _guest_ , he knew which door he was meant to come through. He was past his days of pretending he could be anything else. No army uniform or civvies or nice hat would ever change which door he used.

The yard was not private enough for what he wanted. He needed to be invisible. It had been so easy, these past months, to be invisible. No one looked at him at the Stiles house. Even when he spoke, it seemed that their gaze was always going over his shoulder and straight into the fourth wall. He had started to like it that way. It held no fear of discovery. He walked out behind the greenhouses, breathing vapour into the cold air. Sweat beaded on his neck. With any luck, this was the last time he would see this place. Maybe the last time he would see any of it. No more people staring through him to his ugliest parts and sparing him out of pity or amusement. No more guest room where Phillip broke his heart. No more cold bathroom tiles.

He vomited into the bushes.

The remains of his canapés sat there like an accusation. _What did you just do? Why would you turn that down? Do you really want to die at the Stiles’ with nothing to show for it?_

Thomas registered vaguely that he wasn’t alone. Someone was flapping about to his right making little ‘oh dear’ noises. He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose, leaning his weight against the branches. There were moments in his life, these days, when he realized how goddamn tired he was. Standing on the path next to a puddle of his own sick and not having the energy to lie to anyone about the causes of his indigestion was a new low. He almost laughed when he finally turned to see the Marquess of bloody Hexham.

“Are you alright? I confess I had my doubts about those butterfly things.” Hexham chewed his lip and shivered. The stupid git hadn’t brought his coat. Thomas had no idea what he meant by ‘butterfly things.’

“Was there something you wanted, m’lord?” His service voice was unaffected by the taste of sick still clinging to his mouth.

“This is terribly silly of me, but I was going to ask if I might sketch you. I heard you tell the other chap that you were popping out for a cigarette, and I thought I would catch you but then the passages just kept going and you didn’t turn around when I spoke to you then you were all wobbly and I was worried—” Hexham heaved a breath, his eyes darting between Thomas’, unsure where to focus. It made him dizzy. “Oh, I’m making an utter mess of this.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, m’lord, but you’re not the one who was sick in a bush.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Hexham tried for a smile and fidgeted with his pinky ring. “Oh! Here.” He pulled a silver flask emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis from his jacket and handed it to Thomas. “I can’t vouch for whether it settles the stomach, but it’ll get rid of the taste.”

Thomas tried not to think too hard about what it meant that he was standing behind a greenhouse with a gentleman he had never met, washing his mouth with what he believed was said gentleman’s emergency supply of very expensive cognac. It seemed a sin to spit it out.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you, m’lord.”

“Think nothing of it.” He paused, bouncing a little to stave off the chill. Judging by the blueish tint to his fingernails, it wasn’t working. “I don’t mean to pry, but I must ask if you’re quite alright.”

“I’m quite recovered, m’lord,” Thomas answered resignedly, unbuttoning his coat.

“It’s only that—Oh, you mustn’t. I couldn’t possibly.”

Thomas held out his coat insistently. “You need it more than I do. And how am I supposed to explain it when you freeze to death out here?” Persuaded, Hexham threw the coat about his shoulders but didn’t put his arms in the sleeves, cuddling it about him like a shawl as he thanked Thomas profusely and hemmed and hawed about the other man being too cold. He looked like a fluffy owl, nestled into the too-big garment with his curly hair blowing about. It was rather difficult to take him seriously.

“As I was saying,” he went on, as they started making their circuitous way back, “I don’t mean to intrude on a personal matter, but I must ask on behalf of a certain little boy if you’re alright.”

Thomas got the distinct impression that the other man wasn’t talking about his indigestion. He might have been angry, in another time in his life, that someone had spread rumours about the other reasons why he wasn’t alright. But he knew now that there was no sense in that. Let them talk.

“Again, I don’t want to pry. By all means, tell me to bugger off if you like. It’s only that I got the impression you might wish to return to the children, but when Lord Grantham asked you to be his butler you looked as though you had been sentenced to hang.”

“I can’t come back here.” The words fell out of his mouth without his permission.

To his surprise, Hexham nodded as if it was the most understandable thing in the world. “Do you like your new place?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of liking, m’lord.”

“Where would you rather be, then?” Hexham had an alarming immediacy to his voice. “Come now, you must have thought about it.”

“A butler with a bad hand can’t exactly run off on a whim, Lord Hexham,” he bit out, with more venom than he meant to. The other man was making him feel off-balance, and he was starting to regret giving away his coat. “It doesn’t do men of my station much good to think about where we would go if we had the means.”

Hexham had no right to look as upset as he did. “You must find us insufferable,” he murmured.

Thomas wasn’t sure what it was about the man that possessed him to say: “Only sometimes.”

Hexham’s mouth quirked a little at that. “I suppose that’s as good as any of us have earned.” He looked out over the snowy lawns, huddling impossibly deeper into Thomas’ coat. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth like he was chewing something. “What I’m about to say might be dreadfully silly, and I do apologize if I’ve had the wrong impression, but I must ask if I’m correct in believing that you and I have something in common?”

Ordinarily, this would be damned dangerous territory. But he had heard enough about Peter Pelham, and about Tangiers for that matter, that he felt fairly confident when he said: “Are you asking about the likelihood of butlers getting married?”

“I am.” A relieved smile took over Hexham’s face.

“I think you have your answer, then, m’lord.”

“Is that what happened? If it isn’t a rude question.”

Thomas almost replied with a glib ‘what makes you think something happened’, but Hexham’s manner gave him pause.

“After a fashion. I s’pose it all comes back to that. They all know, and it was like living under the sword of Damocles.” He swallowed. “Waiting for someone to be careless, or decide that they _really_ didn’t like me.”

Hexham winced in sympathy. Thomas might not have any illusions about the threat of prison being of much concern to a marquess, but he had heard the murmurings about Peter Pelham long before today. Whatever else, the man before him knew what it was to be displayed like an exotic curio for the disgusted fascination of the crowd.

“You know,” Hexham said at length, “there are places in the world where the threat is…less acute.”

“With all due respect m’lord, not for me.”

“But if, say—” he fiddled with his hands as if he were making a cat’s-cradle, biting his lip before he went on, “—you had a job waiting for you—a _good_ job, though not quite with a butler title, but with considerable pay and a sympathetic employer—would you go?”

_What in Hell_. “Lord Hexham," he said carefully, "are you suggesting I run away with you to Tangiers?”

He squirmed. “Well when you put it like that it sounds rather scandalous, but, in a word, yes.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows.

“I mean nothing untoward,” Hexham clarified in a rush. “I’m merely offering you a job. George has vouched for you, and if the Crawleys felt you were qualified to be butler to a house like this I imagine the work would be well within your capabilities.”

Well. That was a thought. Tangiers did not sound conducive to being wallpaper. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, in a place like that he could find better things to be. Maybe he could know the rain on palm trees, and what it meant to not be so desperately alone in all the ways that mattered. The part of him that was still alive screamed that there was hope for the rest of Thomas Barrow yet. He wasn’t sure if he believed that part, or why the Marquess of Hexham should give a damn, but at the end of the day, what did he truly have to lose?

“What sort of job is it, m’lord?”


	3. Lord of the Manor

_Lord Hexham,_

_Thank you for your understanding and patience. Even if my employer objects, the 28 th is more than fair and I shall not keep you waiting beyond it. With any luck, I will have found a suitable replacement by that time. Would you prefer that I meet you at Brancaster, or somewhere en route? _

_Regards,_

_T._ _Barrow_

Peter sat alone at the breakfast table, rubbing his eyes. He felt like a brat. How had this man managed to make him feel like a brat in so few polite words? He supposed that was an unfair assessment, though. He had begun feeling like a brat in the middle of the night when he realized that Barrow must be trying to please Sir Mark Stiles in hopes of getting a letter of reference. Because the man didn’t trust him, and why should he? Peter hadn’t even settled on a job title for him, though he was leaning towards ‘personal assistant.’ It was a bit suggestive, given the context, but he couldn’t think of anything else that was both apt and shorter than ‘person who does all the things that Mohammed can’t manage and I’m useless at.’

 _Understanding and patience._ God. His last letter had been nothing but whinging and a childish ultimatum that four weeks was plenty of bloody notice. Peter had asked the man to uproot his whole life. For the promise of a bit of freedom, yes, but still. Of course these things took time. It occurred to him, suddenly, that he didn’t even know if Barrow had a passport. He had best make sure that got sorted out.

Ramsay cleared his throat slightly from the sideboard, startling him out of his train of thought. Peter raised an eyebrow at him.

“Is my lord quite well?” the butler asked smoothly.

“I’m an idiot, Ramsay.”

“I’m sure your lordship exaggerates.”

Peter sighed. “I doubt it, but if you insist.” He missed Mohammed. He pictured the lanky Berber sitting across the table, fixing him with one of _those_ looks and asking ‘what have you done this time, en?’ Imagining the look on Cousin Mirada’s face, or Ramsay’s for that matter, should either of them ever clap eyes on Mohammed was almost enough to get him through the rest of the morning without screaming into a pillow. Almost.

Bertie and Edith were due back today. He didn’t know whether they would make it better or worse. Everything in this house reminded him of something unpleasant, and as much as being haunted by those memories alone was intolerable, the thought that he might inflict the misery on newlyweds was somehow worse. He tried to keep himself busy before their arrival with sketching, but there was only one thing, or rather one person, that he wanted to draw. George’s ‘Bawwow’ had shocked him. The man was almost offensively handsome. It seemed a sin that he wasn’t a film actor or some such. He was beautiful in such an odd way, in a desolate way, like a dead tree or an empty bottle. Peter _had_ to paint him, and had known it from the off. But then, when he cuddled George like his own son, something still alive made itself known behind those icy grey eyes. Peter wanted desperately to see them fully lit up. If his tragedy was so disarming, his joy must be divine. Letting him pass by like a ship in the night was unacceptable. Much as he really _did_ need an assistant, it was losing sight of such a man forever that had compelled him to offer Barrow a job. Peter was still a bit shocked that he had agreed. Perhaps he was simply eager for anything even potentially better than the life he was living. And wasn’t that a cheery thought.

The drawings from memory were deeply unsatisfying. Peter couldn’t say what Barrow’s nose looked like, exactly, but the various iterations he had tried across the page were all wrong. He also couldn’t make up his mind whether he was exaggerating the cheekbones too much, or if he wasn’t making them sharp _enough_. And how much of his hand did that glove cover? It was irregularly cut, he remembered that much. He had a feeling he would never fully capture the eyes, not with all the paints money could buy and all the time in the world. Barrow would have men throwing themselves at him in Tangiers. Peter told himself quite sternly that that was a good thing. He became steadily less convinced of its goodness as the winter sunlight ebbed, and in the shadows his lackluster drawings seemed more real. God, he might be in trouble.

He was pulled out of his increasingly ungentlemanly thoughts by a quiet knock on the study door.

“Yes?”

Marigold stepped into the room, looking like a girl on a mission. Nanny Barrett followed behind, smiling encouragingly. “Uncle Peter, please may we go down?” the little girl asked, with an air of having rehearsed this.

“Is it that time already?” They had nearly half an hour before Edith and Bertie were due back. Marigold already had her coat on.

She nodded emphatically.

“Well we must, then, mustn’t we?” He put his jacket on and scooped her up, eliciting a shy giggle. He could already tell that she would be understated and thoughtful like her mother. Peter hoped she might absorb something from Bertie as well before she was all grown up.

For all her impatience to go downstairs, Marigold was a perfect angel while they waited for the car. Peter would have been bouncing off the walls at that age. In truth, his station as Lord of Brancaster was the only thing keeping him from bouncing off the walls at thirty-nine. He did miss Bertie, but he was used to missing Bertie. What he really missed, selfish as it was, was having some adults in the house who were on his team. Cora had been a delight, Nanny Barrett seemed pleasant enough, and Ramsay was Ramsay, but they did not understand him. The rest of the faces in the house were strangers that he didn’t know how to make not-strangers, or if it was even safe to do so. He sprang up with almost as much enthusiasm as Marigold when the footman (Henry, he remembered) ducked his head in to tell them the car was on the drive.

“There’s Mummy!” Peter said to his charge as the motor pulled up.

Marigold squeaked when her parents exited the car, and fairly leapt out of his arms into Edith’s like a flying squirrel. Only after her mother had cuddled her thoroughly did she allow her new stepfather to give her a kiss. It hurt Peter’s chest to see Bertie so enamoured of that little girl. He knew that his cousin would love her as his own, and equally to any that would come in the future. When Marigold had calmed down, it was Peter’s turn to embrace both of them.

“Good trip, I take it?”

Edith beamed at him. “Marseilles was beautiful,” she enthused. “I can see why you never want to leave the Mediterranean.”

“Well if Bertie ever drives you ’round the twist you can always come stay with me.”

Bertie clasped a hand to his chest in mock offense. “How dare you invite my wife to leave me for your den of iniquity.”

“I’ll have you know that I run a very respectable home,” Peter declared sniffily. Ramsay seemed to have something stuck in his throat. Marigold looked like she might be cataloguing the phrase ‘den of iniquity’ for later, which was alarming. She was getting to the age where they would all have to watch their mouths.

“Where’s Mama?” Edith asked no one in particular.

“She went back last night,” Peter explained. “Hospital business, I believe. I am to say that she was loath to miss you and that she promises to telephone later.”

Edith sighed and shook her head fondly. From what Cora had told him, Edith was the only one in the family who really understood her work, or the appeal of working outside the estate as a woman at all. “I imagine I shall hear all about it.”

As they all shuffled inside, chatting about the weather in France and what Marigold had been up to (which was very serious business), Peter knew that having his family here would make things better, after all. Already the cold halls of that stone monstrosity his ancestors had seen fit to call home felt more alive. He could stay here with them until the end of the month, with only minimal screaming into pillows or hiding in the bath required.

Dinner was a casual affair with just the three of them, and so much better than dining alone. Peter was grateful to the couple for not making him feel like a spare part as they reminisced about their adventures in the south of France. Edith periodically asked him about Tangiers and how it compared to the European side, but in a very different way than her family had in the days before the wedding. She was curious about the souk[2] and about Mohammed, and laughed when he admitted that he now found English cuisine lackluster on a good day.

Sitting in the saloon with them after Ramsay was dismissed, a glass of brandy in his hand and Edith and Bertie leaning into each other on the couch, he felt almost as if he could manage being here. This part was nice, at least, and for the longest time there had been no nice parts in this house. As if on cue to dismiss his charitable thoughts about the place, one of those mystery draughts came through the room and made him shiver. 

“I swear this place exists to make me cold,” Peter grumbled in response to Bertie’s questioning look. “Didn’t you feel that?”

“I can’t say I did. But then again, I’m used to our bracing English climate, even after a week off from it. When are you going back to your African sun?”

“Not for a little while yet. I shall be staying through until the 28th.

“I would have thought you’d skedaddle as soon as possible.”

“Are you sick of me already, Bertie?” Peter affected his best long-suffering voice.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’m always happy to see you. But I’m aware that Northumberland in January is not exactly ideal for your continued good health.”

“You’re not wrong.” Peter had concluded some time ago that living in castles was one of the worst ideas his class had ever come up with. They were wet and dark and cold, even in the newer, renovated parts. It was as if all the winds just seeped in from the tumbled-down mess called the East Tower. Peter had been craving his relatively small bedroom at home with its heavy wooden shutters since he came back a week ago.

“So why stay in such unfortunate weather?” Bertie pressed.

Peter sighed. He supposed he would have to out with it sooner or later. “Do you know of a certain Mr. Barrow? He used to be the under-butler at Downton.”

“Of course. He’s the one who saved Edie from the fire.”

Peter choked on his brandy. “Excuse me?”

“Did I not tell you about that?”

“No! God, Bertie, you never tell me anything interesting.” Of all the letters full of mooning and pining and whinging about how he had ruined everything and going on about the bloody weather, the idiot had never thought to mention that his prospective wife had almost died in a fire and been rescued by the unspeakably handsome under-butler. They needed to have a discussion about priorities. “You _were_ alright, weren’t you, dear?”

“Quite unscathed, I assure you,” she said hurriedly, blushing. “It was all a dreadfully silly accident, my own fault really.”

“Hardly, Edie, it could have happened to anyone.” Bertie took his wife’s hand, running his thumb along her fingers in a soothing motion.

Peter’s face must have betrayed his impatient curiosity because she smiled a little and went on. “I threw something across the room before I went to sleep, only it must have landed half in the fire. The whole room went up with me unconscious. Mr. Barrow ran in through the flames and carried me out.”

So he was handsome, loved children, and was willing to run through flames for someone who, for all her virtues, probably cared precious little for him in the grand scheme of things. Peter was beginning to think that he might _really_ be in trouble.

“I owe that man my happiness,” Bertie murmured seriously. “I wanted to thank him at the wedding, but Edie said he wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” she mused, “he was always strange about it. I think it might have had something to do with our footman being sacked that night. He was caught in rather a compromising position with a guest, or so I’ve gathered. The footman, that is, not Mr. Barrow. They were…good friends, I believe.”

“Oh.” What else could one say to _that_? “And, um,” he swallowed down the uncomfortable mixed feelings about this footman that he really shouldn’t be experiencing, “when was all this?”

“About two years ago. It’s strange; it feels like a lifetime. Everything is so very different now…” Edith looked through the wall, lost in her own thoughts for a moment before snapping back. “But you were saying, Peter?”

“Yes. Right. Well, don’t look now, but I may have asked Mr. Barrow to come and work as my assistant. He needs to work out his notice before heading back with me.”

Bertie raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you’re doing _that_ again.”

“I just met him! Give me some credit, Bertie, honestly. This is strictly a professional matter.” The couple regarded him with identical dubious looks. He sighed. Just because he felt _something_ for the man, which he wasn’t going to afford the dignity of a label, did not mean that he was going to act on it. “Edith, you mustn’t believe everything your husband says about me. I once had a lapse in judgement, but to hear him tell it I am utterly incapable of selecting employees.”

“Alright, alright,” said Bertie, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Strictly professional. So why do you sound like a naughty schoolboy confessing to putting pepper in the headmaster’s tea?”

“For the last time, Bertie, that _wasn’t me,_ ” Peter insisted, rolling his eyes. “The thing is, the Crawleys asked him to be their butler at the wedding and he refused. I think it might ruffle some feathers when they find out he took a job with me instead. While we’re on the subject, I wanted to ask one of you to do the bringing-up once I go home, so they can get used to the idea. I don’t imagine all awkwardness can be avoided, but if it’s old news…”

Edith laughed. “I don’t mind doing it. I’d love to see the look on Papa’s face when he hears that his ex-under-butler absconded to Tangiers.” She went all thoughtful for a moment again. “I can’t say I blame Barrow. It might be the best thing for him, really.”

Bertie had found a gem of a woman. It felt so good to have basic realities acknowledged in the Brancaster saloon. “That’s rather what I thought as well,” he said softly, smiling at her. 

“Quite,” Bertie agreed, though he seemed rather upset. Peter raised an eyebrow at him and got a look that said, emphatically, ‘later.’

The conversation soon returned to more conventional honeymoon ground, winding about the city, the cathedral, the port, all of it rather vague. Peter could guess well enough how they had _really_ spent most of their time, not that he blamed them in the slightest. If it was someone other than Bertie, he would have felt a pang of jealousy in the way that they could love each other. But he could no more begrudge his cousin his happiness than begrudge the sun its brightness, for he was warmed by both.

Edith excused herself first, kissing Bertie’s cheek with a smirk that suggested he would find something interesting upon joining her. The easy atmosphere left with her; the thick silence which was far more familiar to this room settled in, the ticking of the clock obnoxiously noticeable. Bertie sat in contemplation, staring into his glass.

“So Tangiers really is home for you, is it?” he said at length.

Peter’s swallowed. “I’m afraid it is, rather,” he said gently. He wasn’t sure when La Maison Bleue[3] had become ‘home,’ but it was. “I’m not cut out for all this,” he waved a vague hand at their surroundings. “I never was.”

“No, I don’t suppose you are.” Bertie was silent again for a long moment. “You were serious about not marrying.” It was an old wound, an old conversation. The look in Bertie’s eyes told Peter he knew it, too, but couldn’t quite let go of the idea that his cousin would ‘come around,’ as Sam used to say. But Sam was long gone, and so was any belief that Peter would ever do any such thing.

Peter steeled himself for some long-overdue clarity. “I was. Assuming you outlive me, the title will pass to you. I’d give it to you now, if that wouldn’t be an even bigger mess.” He laid a tentative hand on Bertie’s arm, willing him to understand. “I can’t come back here to play Lord of the Manor while everyone knows what I am. And then to go and ruin some poor woman’s life… I simply can’t. It isn’t right.”

“I always knew, I think. Deep down. And I respect your decision, it’s just…having you here with Edith and Marigold…I had an image of us all being a little family.”

“We _are_ a family,” Peter insisted, shaking him. Bertie must know that he couldn’t possibly think of them as anything else. “We’ll always be a family, no matter where I go. Don’t make it sound as if I’m gone forever.”

“You must forgive me for being morose.” His cousin smiled humourlessly. Peter perched on the arm of the couch and hugged him in answer. “I just dream, sometimes, that something’s happened to you over there. That you were gone, and among strangers…”

“I’m not among strangers,” Peter said softly, rubbing circles on his cousin’s back. “I’m among friends. And since when are your dreams prophetic, hm? Remember that one time you jumped in my bed because you insisted the gallery was full of lobsters?”

Bertie snorted. “I was a child.”

“The other night I dreamt that I had to share a bunkbed with King George. He ate peanuts all night and dropped the shells on me.”

“The hell you did,” Bertie murmured, but he was smiling properly now.

“Alright, I made that one up, but the point stands.”

“I know. Just promise that you’ll visit, and that you won’t go jumping in the deep end with this Barrow chap.”

“Of course I’ll visit, you booby. And I don’t intend to go jumping anywhere with anyone. If I am to find myself in any deep ends, it shall be by slow and stately descent.” He wasn’t sure that last bit was entirely true to character, but it got a laugh, so that was something. “Now go take care of your wife. I have a feeling she might have had time to put on something lacy.”

“Peter!”

“What?”

Bertie shook his head and downed his drink. “On that ill-conceived note, goodnight.”

Peter made a conscious decision not to snort. “Goodnight Bertie,” he said innocently. He went to bed that night hoping that they had a good time. It was a weight off his chest to know that Bertie understood him.

January was less arduous with the couple around, even though Edith was in London several days a week. Ramsay had far less power to embarrass him about having a tea party with Marigold and her dollies when Mummy was doing it too. There were people to have dinner with, to go walking with, to talk and gossip with and generally bother. He worked on estate business with Bertie, though mostly Bertie worked while Peter sketched and joked and occasionally offered input. He even had someone in the house to play billiards with, which was quite novel these days. Bertie trounced him nearly every time. He really needed to find someone to play with in Tangiers. He had a feeling Mohammed would be good at it, but he wouldn’t gamble, which was half the fun. 

He exchanged a few letters with Barrow, all utilitarian and professional to a fault. Sometimes it was hard to believe that the hand behind that immaculate, spidery script was the same one that had offered Peter his coat, or shakily clutched the railing in the back stairwell at Downton. Both versions were equally divorced from the picture Edith painted, of an oily but competent veteran who would risk his life for the family and seemingly reject the feudal spirit in the same breath. At least now the glove was no longer a mystery. But he supposed he would figure out how the various faces of Thomas Barrow fit together soon enough.

He felt a twinge of sadness when he hugged Marigold goodbye, promising to send her something special from Morocco. It was the second saddest he had ever been to leave Brancaster, and never had it felt so warm and inviting. It was Bertie and Edith’s house now, in spirit if not in name, and the old pile was so much the better for it. They would make it their own, and he could be simply a welcome guest. Peter could already feel the ghosts of earlier, uglier times fading, though whether the more pernicious ones would ever wash out, he couldn’t say. He still breathed a sigh of relief when his train pulled out of the station. It was good to be going home.

Barrow met him on the platform in London, where they would go on together to Southampton. None of the various attempted sketches over the past month had done him justice on any front, even shivering and exhausted as he was. Everything about him was crisp and monochromatic, with only his shockingly red lips for colour. He smiled politely when he saw Peter, and greeted him with every appropriate formality. He had two small, battered valises that he squeezed onto the cart containing Peter’s more extensive luggage. Peter hadn’t been under any illusions that the average servant had many possessions (Mohammed’s various junk collections notwithstanding), but the idea that this enigmatic man’s whole life could be folded up and tucked into such a small space still baffled him. 

No trace of the man he had met behind the greenhouses showed through. Barrow was the perfect valet, with every hair in place and nary a stray long vowel. Peter had never managed to change trains so efficiently. And then his new companion disappeared to third class, leaving loneliness behind him like a shadow of his image. It was awful. Southampton was awful. It didn’t matter that Barrow said all the Right Things as they boarded the steamer bound for Tangiers by way of Lisbon. Peter rather wished he’d say some Wrong Things. Barrow’s calmness unnerved him. He knew some of the things that lived behind that mask, though the depths were still obscured. Peter had dropped a stone down and heard it echo, and that was enough to understand how dangerous a false calm could be. He’d thought they had a connection. Perhaps not the kind that part of Peter not-so-secretly wanted, but a connection all the same. Yet his new assistant’s every move made it abundantly clear that he had found a competent employee, not a friend. It made Peter feel as if he had glimpsed something that wasn’t for him to see, something sacred meant only for initiates to the Mystery of Thomas Barrow. That perhaps, instead of a friendly face and an understanding ear, he had been an unwelcome intruder on a private moment.

Peter wondered, as England faded away into the blue of distance and his stomach lurched in time with the waves, whether he had made a horrible mistake for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 market [return to text]  
> 3 The Blue House [return to text]


	4. The Blue House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the added tags. They are not really for this chapter.
> 
> I would hope this goes without saying, but be aware that this story is told through the eyes of two white Englishmen in the 1920s, one of whom has very little experience with other cultures. While there’s not going to be any overt racism from anyone we like, the realities of social strata in an occupied Morocco are on display, and what the characters consider ‘normal’ vs. ‘exotic’ or ‘strange’ reflects the time and place they come from. In other words, please be advised that Thomas is going to find stuff like salah and Moroccan styles of dress bizarre.

Thomas stared out into the darkness from the third-class deck and tried not to think too hard about where he was. Being sick in front of one’s new employer was undoubtedly an inauspicious start to anything, but was it cancelled out when the employer returned the favour? At least Thomas had been forewarned. He had wondered several times, the first day of their journey, if intense seasickness was something socially obligatory for upper-class Britons, or perhaps a result of all the inbreeding. How they had ever become a naval power was a mystery.

It was better now, three days in, but Hexham was still staying mostly in his cabin and sleeping as much as humanly possible. This left Thomas free to prowl about and worry, as he had worried for the past month, that he had made an absolutely terrible decision. He knew precious little about fine art, spoke broken French at best and not a word of Spanish, and had no interest in getting into sexual entanglements with toffs again. Yet here he was, on a boat to Tangiers with a titled artist who kept looking at him like he was edible. He was too fucking old for this.

His last month at the Stiles House had been Hell. He had hardly worked there long, yet it was treated as the gravest betrayal that he was leaving. The lady of the house had turned her nose up at every prospective replacement he put in front of her, even though they were all perfectly qualified and suitably dull. He knew she was doing it out of spite, yet he had to keep wasting people’s time by interviewing them. In the end, he left with no replacement, no reference, and no idea to this day what the cook or the maid thought about any of it. And now he was here. 

The watered-ink light of predawn started to differentiate the various shades of black around him. He lit a cigarette and watched the dark churn of the water. He was the only passenger out on the deck at this time of morning. It was going to be a pain getting Hexham off the ship, and that knowledge had woken him at an ungodly hour to make sure all his own affairs were in order. He didn’t know how to be a ‘personal assistant,’ but he knew how to be a valet, and he could at least do that right.

The sun was coming up in earnest now, brighter than he was used to this time of year. It took him a long moment to realize that he was looking at Africa for the first time. Mountains rose in the blue of distance, their dark, hunched shapes resolving into craggy peaks with the coming light. Thomas had never realized that you could _see_ across the Strait of Gibraltar, which was silly of him in hindsight. He fancied there was a different tone to the sky above the continent, a certain muted, hazy quality to the blue that was absent from the Spanish side. Perhaps it was dust from the Sahara, floating permanently in the air. In a matter of hours he would be breathing that air, knowing what it all looked and smelled and felt like. He hadn’t been excited for anything in a long time, and despite all his misgivings, he was at least excited for that.

He stood there, watching the coast as the ship woke up around him. When he was a lad, he had been obsessed with adventure stories, with explorers and exotic lands. His copy of Treasure Island was one of the few things he had wrapped in a bundle the night he left the clock shop in Avery Street. It was with him now, laid among his clothes, his meagre collection of photographs tucked carefully between the yellowed pages. He had realized long ago that exploring the world and battling pirates wasn’t going to be in his future, but the little boy who had shoved a stick through his belt and called it a sword would have lost his mind at the coastline growing clearer before him. No water in England was that sapphire blue, no trees that dusty green. The gulls and terns that wheeled in the sky were foreign, their cries a new language to his ears. The notion that they might one day become as familiar as the sparrows and robins in Yorkshire was mind-boggling.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Thomas jumped. Lord Hexham was all brushed and dressed, smiling tentatively at him. He still looked a bit pale, but seemed to be in much better spirits.

“It is, m’lord. Shall I see to your cabin?”

“Oh, I think I’ve got it sorted. I couldn’t sleep.”

Thomas inclined his head, waiting for Hexham to tell him what he wanted. No explanation came. The other man simply leaned on the railing, watching the coast as Thomas had. After a moment he leaned too, which seemed to be the right move as it got him another smile.

They watched together in silence as the port of Tangiers inched closer. The spatter of white along the shore gathered detail, becoming boxy homes and shops that scattered out as the town rose into green hills. If Thomas squinted, he could make out a couple isolated towers rising from the city like slim fingers. _Minarets_ , those were called, if his memory served him. Hexham started to point things out as they got closer; the long curve of the beach, the casbah[4], the road out to Cape Spartel, all with mounting enthusiasm. His childish excitement was infectious, and Thomas found himself smiling and nodding along as the marquess bounced from tangent to tangent, about everything from how one could find the best coffee in the Arab quarter to the city’s population of stray cats. Soon enough, it was time to disembark and meet the butler.

The port was a breathing mass of humanity. Europeans of various stripes mingled with native Moroccans in their long, hooded robes, while passenger crafts docked beside cargo ships trading everything from vegetables and fish to what looked like a printing press. Myriad languages shouted back and forth as people went about their business, half the small transactions being conducted via pointing and holding up fingers.

“Oh, there he is. Mohammed!” Hexham called. “Mohammed!”

Five different men turned around, but fortunately a hand popped out of one of those robes and waved in recognition. The beanpole of a butler made his way over through the crowd. Thick glasses perched precariously on his beaky nose, and behind them the dark, magnified eyes narrowed for a moment at Thomas before he _hugged_ Hexham like they were old mates.

“The English didn’t eat you, en?” He had a deep voice, with a French-adjacent accent.

“Not for lack of trying. I have been thoroughly chewed.”

The butler chuckled. “So this is Barrow?”

“The very same. Mr. Thomas Barrow, may I present Mr. Mohammed Amrouche. It’s his house, I just live there.”

And wasn’t that a statement for the ages. The two men shook hands, eyeing each other up. “And how shall I address you?” Thomas asked bluntly.

He snorted. “Mohammed is good enough.” 

Thomas had a feeling the butler already didn’t like him. What else was new. The bubble of excitement he had been living in since dawn had been unceremoniously popped. It was a new continent, but he was the same man, and it was silly to think that everything was going to be fine. At least Mohammed helped carry the suitcases without a single noise suggesting he thought it beneath him. Though, Thomas supposed, that would be a bit difficult when Hexham himself was managing two of them.

Mohammed led the way to a green Delage and slipped a boy in a fez a handful of coins, presumably for watching the thing. The boy looked up at Thomas with wide eyes before he scarpered away into the crowd. The whole thing seemed irresponsible beyond belief. But it was nothing compared to the way that the man drove. The narrow streets of the city zoomed by at an alarming speed, a blur of many colours against the whitewash of the buildings. Thomas saw an ostrich for the first time as they skirted around an enormous market, and barely had a moment to process how _big_ it was before he was staring at the colourful domes of what he could only assume was a mosque. Hexham nattered about what a lovely lady Edith was and complained about subsisting off bread and bicarbonate for the last three days, his stomach apparently coping just fine with the car zigzagging around carts and pedestrians. Mohammed mm-hm’d his way through it, lighting a cigarette one-handed as they left the bustle of the city proper for the hills. At this point, Thomas no longer had it in him to be surprised at the impropriety.

Palms shaded the road now, waving their giant fronds softly in the breeze. There were cypresses, too, and citrus trees with their fragrant leaves guarding the gates of more stately properties. He could guess from the glimpses of rococo decoration and Spanish-style roofs that this was where the wealthy Europeans made their homes. Mohammed pulled to a stop by a long, earthen wall.

He rummaged around in his pockets and handed Thomas a large key, still managing to look down his nose even though they were the same height sitting down. 

Thomas got out of the car on shaky legs, glad that the journey was finally over. The gate was an intricate wrought-iron thing, though much heftier than its completely decorative British counterparts. _6 Rue des Fontaines_ [5] was painted beside it in blocky blue letters. Thomas unhooked the lock and swung it open, catching his trouser leg on an enormous succulent that splayed out from the ditch like an octopus in the process. He was too impressed with the thing to be upset about it.

Gate negotiated, there was just a short journey up the bumpy cobbled drive through dense shrubbery. The marquess seemed to favour living in a little forest over the sloping lawns of England. There was an organization to the plants, though, a certain geometry to the tangle of trees that reminded him of pictures he had seen of Versailles, albeit much more overgrown. The road split in two around a circular garden full of short, squat palms and rejoined in front on La Maison Bleue. It was a large house by any normal person’s standard, but compared to the ancestral country piles Thomas was used to dealing with it was positively tiny. The façade was simple whitewash with small, arched windows, just like much of the city. The only parts that really hinted at higher quality were the studded doors with twin brass knockers, and the verdant greenery that spilled from the crenellated roof. This was where he lived, now. He didn’t imagine it would be home, but there was something to be said for it all the same. If someone had told him a year ago, or a month ago, for that matter, that he would be standing here, he would never have believed it.

There was a cool dimness inside the domed entry hall that reminded him of a cave. It was a very well-decorated cave, though, with ornate, coloured-glass light fixtures and decorative tiles on the floor. Tapestries that seemed to have been collected from all over the world hung on the walls, and a couple low benches framed an impressive oak staircase. It was all strangely offset by a large and very middle-class coat rack. He discovered that under the robe Mohammed was dressed in mostly Western style, though of much looser fit, and instead of a collar and tie the neck of his shirt ended in a ring of embroidery. It was a bit jarring in how almost-ordinary it was, given that the man had looked like a sorcerer a moment ago. 

“Is everything alright?”

Thomas turned to look at Lord Hexham, who was standing meekly with his hands behind his back. What the hell did the man want? And was his servant’s blank slipping so much? There wasn’t even anything particularly wrong. Other than that Mohammed seemed to dislike him on general principle, but he was used to that. Though if it was for the usual reason, the man was going to be in for a nasty shock about his employer.

“Of course, my lord,” he said carefully. “I suppose I expected it to be blue.”

“Oh yes, that,” Hexham said, brightening instantly. “Come with me.”

Thomas obediently left the luggage in Mohammed’s hands, which didn’t seem to faze the butler in the least, and followed Lord Hexham under the double-staircase and through a pair of French doors. 

The courtyard was not like anything Thomas had ever seen. An intricately carved colonnade ran around the inside walls of the building, converging on the other side into something that was not so much a porch as a sitting room with a wall missing. A variety of divans and large, wicker chairs were arranged in it to look out on the greenery. Above it, the wall enclosing the U-shaped house had arched windows that let slices of sky through, but were too high for anyone to see in. The garden was cut in four by walkways, the sunken beds leaving the citrus trees’ canopies right at eye-level to anyone going through. In the centre of it all stood a shallow fountain, placidly burbling. Every surface was decorated with geometric tiles in all the brightest shades of blue. They splayed in star-shaped ripples around the base of the fountain and traveled out like canals cut through the pale stone of the walkways, splashing up the walls under the colonnade and swirling around the domed indents in its roof.

“Now you see why it’s called ‘The Blue House.’” Hexham grinned at him like a child showing off his favourite toy.

Thomas shut his mouth. “Quite, m’lord,” he said, clearing his throat. It wasn’t that he had never seen a garden before. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen far more opulent gardens. But he had never seen a garden whose entire existence spoke of sanctuary, of peace. This wasn’t here for show. It was here because it was loved. Someone had painstakingly laid each of those irregularly shaped tiles, interlocking them to mimic the swirling waves of the Mediterranean. Someone had trained those oranges just-so. Each quarter of the garden was its own little Eden, sheltered from everything else. He hoped that it would be alright for him to sit out here, sometimes.

The rest of the ground floor, of which Hexham decided to give him a full impromptu tour, was quite underwhelming after that. The highlights were a drawing room full of over-stuffed and only vaguely matching chairs, a library with a smaller but much more well-thumbed collection than any grand house, and a dining room with an unusual chandelier that looked like wisteria, “though when it’s hot we nearly always eat out in the loggia,” Hexham explained. The dining room led right into the kitchen via a swing door, where he was introduced to Ibrahim. The cook was a middle-aged Moroccan with an impressive moustache who spoke about five words of English. He presided with appropriate gravitas over a pot of something that smelled spicy and delicious, that Thomas hoped was for lunch. He seemed like a pleasant enough bloke, though, and pressed wonderful little honey-covered pastries on them before shooing them out with no real malice.

“Before we both get settled in,” Hexham said as they mounted the stairs, “Would you like to see the roof?”

“If you wish, my lord.”

Hexham looked rather disappointed in that response, but led the way regardless. He pointed out the bedrooms and his studio on the way, though he did not open the doors. “Please don’t go in the studio without permission, and don’t move things about in there. I have a system,” he said firmly, as if people going in there and messing about was a recurring issue. Though, from what Thomas had seen of Mohammed, perhaps it was.

Beside the studio, a door led onto a balcony that wrapped around atop the courtyard’s colonnade. A set of steps went up from it onto the flat roof. It did not have the refined beauty of the courtyard, but had a secrecy and haphazardness to it that was deeply appealing. Large planters overflowed with flowering shrubs, trailing vines over walls that came just high enough that one could sit down and be completely invisible from below. A large section of the whole thing was under a massive wooden pergola covered in dormant vines, whose shade Thomas imagined would be necessary to making use of the roof during the sweltering summer months.

He could get a good view of the property from up here, and discovered that it wasn’t that big at all. Just big enough for the trees that ringed the building to afford some proper privacy from the neighbours. Just big enough for Hexham to be king of his own castle, with no one to say otherwise. If he looked North, he could see the city stretching out towards the sea, placid and white, though he knew firsthand what a hive of activity those narrow streets really were. It struck him, suddenly, how very far he was from home.

Hexham led him to his room with instructions to ask Mohammed if he needed anything, and an abrupt announcement that he intended to take a bath before lunch. Thomas wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information, but he supposed that he had signed on to be an assistant to a mad artist, and that treating employees like they were people worth talking to wasn’t the worst type of eccentricity.

It wasn’t a servant’s room. It wasn’t even a working-class employee’s room. It had a vanity. Not just a basin with a mirror, but a proper _vanity._ Nearly the entire floor was covered in a thick Persian carpet, and the mahogany furniture, while a little battered, was of undeniable quality. Mohammed had placed his suitcases at the foot of a bed that was easily large enough for two people. Atop one of the cases was a ring of keys, one of which was labeled _room_ with a piece of tape _._ He checked the door. He, Thomas Barrow, was possessed of a room with a giant bed and a door that locked. It made a satisfying click. He flopped on the bed, which was just as comfortable as it looked, and thought of all the ways that this could go horribly wrong.

He was bloody tired. He had been travelling for days, stressed and frightened and not sure how anything worked anymore. If the way Mohammed behaved was any indication, he had an extraordinary amount of leeway here. But if life had taught him anything, it was that the rules that applied to others did not necessarily apply to him. He wanted to crawl under the covers of that too-soft bed and leave the world for a while so his brain could catch up. But there were no such self-indulgences for the likes of him. It was time to unpack, and start making a good impression. He had already decided that he wasn’t going to give anyone a reason to hate him. If they did, then they did, but he would not invite it.

His possessions seemed so small in the extra space of the room. His clothes took up about a quarter of the wardrobe. The books hardly merited the shelf. He laid out his photographs on the vanity, each one seeming suddenly more distant. He supposed they were, now separated by space as well as time. His mother was the only one that had a frame. He decided he would get one for Lt. Courtenay and Nurse Crawley, too. They deserved to be out in the light. He took a long moment to look at the one from the village cricket match a few years ago before wrapping it in paper once more and placing it carefully in a drawer. It was the only thing he had left of Jimmy. 

Lunch consisted of shakshuka, which was a spicy tomato concoction with eggs poached in it, and copious amounts of flatbread. Thomas had occasionally contemplated dining at an upstairs table, but in his limited imaginings he had certainly never thought it would involve a Moroccan servant to his left, his employer across from him, and not a single fork between them. The part of him that sounded like Carson railed against the impropriety of it all. The part of him that sounded like George pointed out that picking food up with bread was a rather efficient way to do things, once you got used to it. And who was Hexham supposed to eat with? It wasn’t like the man had a wife, and he didn’t seem the sort who was keen to take most of his meals in lonely silence.

Mohammed was completely unamused with Thomas’ pointedly immaculate posture and polite replies. He leaned comfortably in his chair and examined the newest addition to the house like Thomas was something squishy but fascinating that he had found at the beach. There was something birdlike about him that Thomas found unnerving, like those too-big eyes were deciding whether or not it was worth the time to peck him to death. After a while of oblivious nattering, even Hexham seemed to sense the tension and glanced between the two of them nervously. He said nothing, however, and Mohammed disappeared into the kitchen the second the meal was over. 

_Best get a move on._

“Perhaps I might begin familiarizing myself with your lordship’s affairs?”

“Oh. Have you unpacked and everything, then?”

“I am all settled, my lord.”

“Right. Well. I suppose I had best show you the beast.” Hexham seemed almost disappointed.

‘The beast’ turned out to be the desk and two filing cabinets in the library, which contained the documentation of Hexham’s entire professional life. Thomas couldn’t stop his eyebrows from climbing upwards when Hexham opened a drawer with a grimace. It was a mess.

“I suppose you could begin by setting this to rights. You’re welcome to ask me if you have questions, but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, if we’re being honest.”

“Very good, my lord.” So begins the life of a personal assistant. 

He sat at the desk and started sorting the moment Hexham left the room. The marquess had no sense of organization, not that Thomas could complain. It was the whole reason he had a job, after all. The drawers were a mess of lists, letters, gallery invoices, shipping documents and bills of sale. Nothing was bound, all of it thrown in piles. He felt like an archaeologist, digging down through the layers dating all the way back to 1919 at the bottom. He wondered vaguely if the desk had been moved with all this in situ, or if Hexham had gathered it up from wherever it lived before without sorting it, and transplanted it to its new home. When the spilled ink bottle had arrived on the scene wasn’t something he really wanted to find out. At least he would have something to do for a good long while.

Mohammed looked flabbergasted when Thomas turned up in the little office tucked behind the kitchen looking for cleaning supplies and ledgers, but showed him where to find all of the above without comment. Armed with what he needed, he attacked the task before him with vigour. There was a calmness to be found in being busy. It was easier to blank out his mind by filling it with facts and figures, easier to become a well-oiled machine for a few hours until he would have to endure another awkward meal. The food was good so far, at least.

He could do this. It was much like being a butler, really, except instead of managing a house, he was managing a person. A person with a rather formidable body of artistic works. It was a bit like a big puzzle, sorting through it all, matching up dates, figuring out which paintings were which and what galleries had sold them or sent them back, at what price and commission rate and whether it was any good. They would not be doing business with _Brunelli_ in Paris again if Thomas had anything to say about it. He could do this. He could lose himself in work, and be a dutiful assistant to a pleasant man in a beautiful place. It would be alright. It didn’t matter if the only other employees he had met so far didn’t speak his language and disliked him, respectively. It didn’t matter that he was a thousand miles from the only place he had ever called home. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t gotten an answer from Phyllis when he’d told her what he’d done. It was fine. He could do this.

One day slid into the next, and the next and the next. It was satisfying, bringing order together out of chaos. When he was done with the library, there was the studio that needed an inventory taken. There were people to call and paints to order. There was a grandfather clock in the drawing room to fix. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t supposed to be keeping what very nearly amounted to servant’s hours with no days off, but he wouldn’t know what to do with himself otherwise. When he wasn’t working, he read and practiced French, or sat in the garden watching the birds. His favourite was an orange, black, and white one with a crown of feathers on its head that Ibrahim called a ‘hudhud.’[6] At night he lay awake into the wee hours and blew smoke out the window.

Things were much the same as they had been, and yet so very different. He had never worked anywhere where someone who was entirely naked might say ‘come in’ if you knocked on the door. He quickly learned where to cast his eyes when he came into the studio so as to avoid unpleasant surprises. The paintings didn’t bother him, but something about having a flesh-and-blood man in front of him on a divan with everything out in the wind was a bit much. Lord knew where Hexham found such people, though it was probably wherever he had met the menagerie of eccentric friends that sometimes came calling for tea. Thomas followed Mohammed’s lead, and never ate at the upstairs table when there were people over. Both outside and inside the house, the city itself had a different rhythm to it, with its ordained pauses and daily rituals. He once walked in on Mohammed with his forehead pressed to a green mat, and made sure to never do it again. Somehow, interrupting a man at prayer felt worse than walking in on a man with his cock out. But at the end of the day a house was a house and toffs were toffs and service was service, even if what he did no longer quite fit under that umbrella. It was just a different colour of wallpaper.

Hexham was still sunny and overly familiar, though he gave him more space these days. Mohammed settled into a generally polite but distant stance, looking at him from the sidelines like he was some strange, foreign creature. Which was fair, in a way. He had always been strange, and here he was foreign, too. The other staff, such as they were, were alright. The two girls who came in to clean one day a week smiled at him and said ‘Allo, M’sieur Barrow,’ but not much else. It took him far too long to realize that they were Ibrahim’s daughters, and that the woman who took the washing was his wife. The wiry old Spaniard who could sometimes be seen puttering about in the gardens kept entirely to himself.

The only other person he regularly interacted with was a Mr. Benjamin Costello, who ran a gallery for some patron of the arts called Burbage. It felt good, in a distant way, to hear the man slip from his best posh voice into pure Leeds over the phone when he realized who he was talking to. Benny, as he insisted Thomas call him (and who addressed Thomas variously as lovey, ducky, or dear), called about an upcoming show far more than was necessary and popped up at the house for increasingly tenuous reasons. Thomas wondered if perhaps he fancied Hexham, the way the little man bounced around nervously and twisted his podgy hands together whenever he came by. Thomas wished him luck, if that was the case. It might make things easier if Hexham was taken. Easier for whom, he wasn’t sure. Everybody, probably. 

Time slipped away as the orange trees bloomed in the courtyard and life rolled on, until one day he woke up and it was March. He opened his window to the foreign warmth. “Happy birthday, Thomas,” he whispered. The sun came up red over the hills. He didn’t know why he was crying so hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 citadel [return to text]  
> 5 Fountain Street (lit. 'Street of the Fountains'). This is an entirely fictitious address. [return to text]  
> 6 hoopoe [return to text]


End file.
